Hard to say what the amortized cost would be- what length of time would you amortize over? At this point, we don't have a large dataset on the expected lifespan of current generation wind turbines and solar-thermal plants.

Even nukes would be hard to quantify, as many of the nuke plants in the US have already received license extensions to operation beyond their original design-basis lifetime, albeit at the cost of significant refurbishment (replacement of vessel heads, steam generators, backup systems, main coolant pumps, etc.)

And do coal plants even have a lifetime? We've got a lot of stations in the US which have been operating since the 1940s and 50s, with no end in sight.


I really loved the "GHG emissions"chart with fooger03 posted:



A while back, someone had noted that my e-bike was not actually 100% emissions-free, even when being charged from San Onofre. Granted. But who knew that our friendly local nuke plant had a lower total greenhouse footprint than an equivalent wind-turbine farm or hydroelectric dam? And, mind you, this data was complied by a bunch of hippies (literally) who call themselves Lotus Live and espouse "positive sustainability". You can bet that they didn't intentionally skew that data in favor of fission.

Suck on that, anti-nuke crowd.

 

How old is what info? NYMEX spot pricing on US natural gas? My info is "current." It's technically at $2.82 as of 2:23 PM.

EIA spot pricing chart

 

No, fooger's data that NG is $4/mcf.

 

As another negative, there was a big article in our local paper today about how much the three active projects in the US are all over budget and how it could impact future builds. I knew the slant that was coming when it opened as "As the first new nuclear plant construction in over a decade..."

I guess technically 34 years is in fact "over a decade".

 

It's important to consider this in perspective, of course.

What's the significance of 3 or 4 billion dollars spent on something which will last 40 years or more, as compared to the amount of money and lives which will be saved by offsetting the need for fossil-fuel generation over that entire period?

These articles talk about a couple of billion dollars like it's a big deal.

 

Some people can give away a trillion without thinking anything of it and got nothing in return so yeah, a billion that will actually save lives and money really is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

 

The chart say 2011 pricing and $4/mcf seems like a reasonable annualized average (without actually having crunched the numbers myself).

 

 

Hasn't this number shrunk recently?

 

You are confusing the hell out of me in this thread, Jason.

Has what number shrunk recently? The price of natural gas?


Are you intentionally messing with me?

 

Not messing, I get the impression teh price of nat gas has shrunk recently from the $4 figure. I'm asking because I'm thinking of doing the same thing you suggested, buy UNG.

 

Either your reading comprehension [when not reading something from Mises.org or an anarchocapitalist website] is getting worse or you are messing with me. Based on the cat in your signature, I suspect the latter.

Alternative conspiracy theory is that you and Codycord are being intentionally dense to undermine discourse.

 

Never mind, I mixed up "cost to produce" as in "cost to suck out of the ground", and "price on the market". You just assume I'm purposely being obtuse.
Short answers is what happens when I reply on my handheld.

 

I figured it was something out of the ordinary as you generally lack the sort of humor (on this board, that I have seen) that would be involved in "bazinga!-ing" me in such a manner and you are normally not the type to make such simple oversight mistakes (repeatedly). [backhanded compliment]

 

More progress!

The Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously rejected a petition by the anti-human group "Southern Alliance for Clean Energy" to halt the Vogtle expansion. Construction progresses unimpeded.


BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Additionally, the NRC has granted a combined operating license to South Carolina Electric & Gas, authorizing the construction of TWO MORE AP1000 REACTORS, identical to the new Vogtle units, at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant just north of Columbia, SC. (V.C. Summer presently operates a single Westinghouse PWR reactor, rated at 1000 MWe. V.C Summer units 2 and 3 are scheduled to commence operation in 2017 and 2018, respectively.


I can barely wrap my head around the fact that after 35 years, America's nuclear renaissance appears to actually be happening.

 

At the same time that huge amounts of fossil fuels have become accessible domestically. This combination could have such amazingly positive implications for the future of the USA, I hesitate to consider them all for fear of jinxing it.

 

So what you're saying is we're the only country in the world not shitting themselves and canning nuclear power because of Fuskushima? My god, we're somehow smarter than the Germans for once...

We need to keep building these things. Everywhere. It's the first step toward the energy independence we all know is coming in a couple hundred years when the oil gets too scarce/expensive.

 

It will happen if you leave the market alone.

BTW we don't need "energy independence" any more than we need "avocado independence" or "tantalum capacitor independence". Just get the politics out of free trade and leave the market alone.

 

We are avocado-independent, and at last check we weren't engaging in wars to ensure the uninterrupted flow of tantalum capacitors, nor tracking the retail cost of tantalum capacitors as a barometer of economic health and consumer confidence.


But you're right- we don't need to be 100% energy-independent. We just need to stop running a trade deficit. Energy-independence would be one step towards achieving that goal.


This is so wrong it barely merits a response.

What does "leave the market alone" mean? Stop regulating it? That principle results in corruption, crime and de-facto rule-by-warlord when applied to everyday goings-on (see Syria, Mogadishu, Somalia, Russia in 1918-1919, etc)

Are you familiar with The Prisioner's Dilemna?

Complete and total deregulation of all industry and commerce in the US would result in almost instantaneous and total economic collapse, and for the same reasons.


Also, I consider it thread-crapping when anyone attempts to latch onto any conversation and steer it in the direction of a specific political agenda. In fact, it's more than thread-crapping- it's downright trolling.

 

I did not intend a sidetrack. It was more of a "there won't be any oil left so we'll need to handle our own energy needs" statement. Globalization is a good thing IMHO.

Anyways, back to the nukes. Has the voting population figured out that if we can run reactors on underwater stealth tubes of freedom safely that we can do it on land safely?